Re:How green is blue hydrogen?
by p_l on Thursday August 12, 2021 @07:48PM
(#28163301)
Dunno how it goes for other countries, but I spoke with someone who did professional analysis on green hydrogen from renewables for Poland... and it's not a good outlook.
Essentially, in order to produce it in any reasonable quantity, assuming highest available efficiencies, required such massive overbuilding of renewables that economics started to take second position to just plain "zomg" effect.
It got better if you combined it with nuclear, but there the free market that EU insists on in energy actually made it harder to achieve anything useful, so you end up with massive overbuilding still. It had a little chance if you overbuild wind & solar while also making it so you had nuclear providing close to 100% of the "base load" (defined as "floor in daily electricity consumption") while possibly providing green hydrogen as extra sink for renewables to recoup costs... but it still was problematic economically :(
Essentially, in order to produce it in any reasonable quantity, assuming highest available efficiencies, required such massive overbuilding of renewables that economics started to take second position to just plain "zomg" effect.
It got better if you combined it with nuclear, but there the free market that EU insists on in energy actually made it harder to achieve anything useful, so you end up with massive overbuilding still. It had a little chance if you overbuild wind & solar while also making it so you had nuclear providing close to 100% of the "base load" (defined as "floor in daily electricity consumption") while possibly providing green hydrogen as extra sink for renewables to recoup costs... but it still was problematic economically :(